RSA make it five in a row as India goes under again

Prem Panicker

They say that the difference between winning and losing is getting your basics right, concentrating on the job at hand, and staying focussed throughout the game.

It may not be always possible to lift your game to those rarefied heights which sportsmen call the "zone" - that elysian realm where nothing can ever go wrong for you on the day. But the point is to ensure that each time out, you at the least play to your potential.

SA has done precisely that in the five games they've had in this tournament so far, and in consequence, won all five. India, by contrast, has failed to do precisely that - play to potential - and the result? Two defeats, one tie.

Here's the post mortem of the latest...

The Indian innings

In retrospect, it is going to be suggested that India should have gone into this game with two spinners. But given that when play started, the wicket looked nice and green, with a covering of grass on it, every single expert worth the name predicted that the quicks would do well - so, when taken in tandem with the fact that the boundaries tend to be on the smaller side here, the decision not to play Joshi is not as glaring an error as it appears.

In the event, India went into the day game at St George's Park, Port Elizabeth, with an unchanged side. RSA, already in the final, decided to use the chance to try out its bench strength - resting Hudson and bringing in all-rounder Jacques Kallis, while promoting Adam Bacher to the opener's slot by way of investing in the future.

India won the toss and took first strike - a fair enough decision again, in hindsight, given that the pitch wasn't too good to start with, and only got worse as the day wore on. Skipper Tendulkar, going through a prolonged lean patch, dropped himself down the order, promoting Dravid to open with Ganguly, and the fun began right in the first over.

Ganguly has talent, yes. But time and again, he seems to wander around in a bit of a mental haze - and nowhere was it as pronounced as here when, having pushed Pollock to point, he casually wandered down the wicket, calling for a single. It was Dravid's call, the non-striker declined and even as Adam Bacher raced in from point, fielded, dived forward and threw down the stumps, Ganguly turned in his tracks, rather casually reached out with his bat and, for his lethargy, deserved to be caught out of his ground. Which he was, for nought, and India were 0/1 in the fourth ball of the innings.

Out came Javagal Srinath at number three. Now, this has been said before but needs repeating again - a pinch hitter works when you have lost a wicket say in the 10th or 11th over, and you just need someone to go out and belt a few before the restrictions are off. If you lose one in the first over, though, a batsman makes more sense - even more so when the wicket is not the kind of one where the ball comes nice and even onto the bat. Again, the choice of pinch hitter depends on current form, not a flash in the pan innings every now and again - and judging by form, someone like Saba Karim, who plays very straight and copes well with quick bowling, would have been a better bet if India felt the need to try shuffling the order. Srinath, inserted by rote, poked around for a bit and finally put himself out of his misery by chasing a wide one from Jacques Kallis, who shared the new ball with Pollock, to the keeper to reduce India to 7/2.

Sachin Tendulkar found himself coming out, thus, virtually as an opener. Sachin is by repute a player who thinks about his game. Again, by repute, he talks to past masters like Sunil Gavaskar almost every other innings. Rather strange to see, then, that Tendulkar has persisted with the one technical flaw that has led to his cheap dismissal in recent outings - a tendency to go straight forward, pushing with bat away from body and leaving the gap between bat and pad, rather than going back and across as the initial movement. The only time Sachin did go back and across consistently was at Newlands in the second Test - and he had 160-odd to show for it there. Here, he again poked his front foot out and Allan Donald, introduced early into the attack by Hansie Cronje (very good captaincy that, Cronje bringing Donald on for Kallis when Tendulkar walked out, attacking with his best bowler before the Indian skipper settled down), did the needful, producing one of good length that seamed in through the gate to peg back middle stump. India 11/3 and, for all practical purposes, the game was lost right there.

Azharuddin and Dravid came together for the rescue act. And did in fact manage to take the score from 11/3 to 116 - which qualifies as a good recovery act. The problem was that far too many overs were used up in the process, India reaching the 100 run mark only in the 33rd over.

Why? Because, initially, when Azhar seemed to be timing the ball well, Dravid found himself in a defensive rut. Time and again, Azhar played the first ball of an over for a single into the gap, and Dravid found himself pushing the next five straight to fielders. With the result that by the time Dravid played himself in and began taking the singles, Azhar had lost that early fluency and began finding the gaps hard to find. It is for this reason that the experts recommend that if you are building (or, as here, re-building) an innings, you focus, always, on working the ball into the gaps, checking your strokes to take the pace off and getting the singles. That, for instance, is what Zimbabwe has done every time it found itself struggling against early loss of wickets, and what India should have been doing here.

In the event, both batsmen took too little singles and by the time they realised the urgency and began playing positively, the innings was into the 36th over, the score was just over the 100 mark and the 230-odd that would have been a good total on a wicket where the ball was not coming on to the bat looked completely out of reach.

Dravid (50 off 104 with three fours and one six) did try to remedy matters, swinging Paul Adams over mid on for a huge six, but in trying to accelerate from zero to 100 mph in one go, got the outer edge to Donald's away-seamer for Cronje to take comfortably at midwicket. India 116/4.

And 118/5 minutes later when Azharuddin (57 off 93 with three fours), also looking to accelerate, flicked at a well disguised slower one from Donald, got the leading edge and Rhodes, running easily from mid on, took the catch behind the bowler.

That brought Jadeja and Saba Karim together. And a sense of purpose became apparent as the two hustled singles, converted some into twos and looked to be going well when Adam Bacher pullled off a blinder. Karim (8/16 with one four) got width from Adams and looked to deliberately hit over the top of the infield. As shot selections go, it was fair enough - but Bacher flung himself up and to his right at cover point and produced the sort of catch he had taken at Newlands to get rid of Tendulkar. India 130/6.

Jadeja (15 off 14 with one four and one six) meanwhile was beginning to look dangerous, taking a rising one from Kallis and deliberately hitting up and over extra cover, taking on the sweeper and getting a six, when he danced down the track, missed a flick, and was struck low on the pads. The ball was angled in to the right hander, and on middle and leg when the pad was struck - which meant it was leaving leg stump. In the event, the appeal was upheld, and it was Jadeja's turn to fall victim to one of those umpiring quirks that are "part and parcel of the game". India 147/7.

Robin Singh (18 off 18) did his best, running brilliantly and, despite the ball slowing down on the wicket and making stroke production difficult, managing to dance down to Hansie Cronje and hitting him up and back over the straight field for a six. But with India already into the 46th over, it was pretty much a case of hit or perish, and Robin mistimed a heave at Pollock to mid on, for Donald to take a well-judged catch off the leading edge at cover. India 168/8.

Ankola (8 off 6 with one four) and Kumble (11 off 18) did the best they could, running hard, working the ball around and getting runs fairly quick... and off the last ball of the 50th, Ankola went for an impossible second run, was out of his ground, and India ended on 179/9 in 50 overs. By any yardstick, that was at least 50 runs less than a defensible total on admittedly a crumbling pitch, and the Indian batsmen at the top of the order have only themselves to blame, yet again, for not doing what they needed to.

As per usual, SA was electric in the field. Before the game, they were out there for over an hour, practising fielding and throwing - and that commitment and dedication showed in the way they stopped shots that were headed for the country, threw down the stumps from all angles and generally ensured that the Indians made far too few runs to give their batsmen any trouble. The bowling, again, was good on a wicket of uncertain bounce, all bowlers concentrating on line and length, realising that if they kept the ball on the stumps, given the uncertain bounce it was next to impossible for the batsmen to play strokes.

The SA innings

For India, there was no hope of defending a total of 179. Wickets were needed, and Prasad obliged when he got Kirsten, in the very second over, to chase one outside off and leaving the bat, for Azhar to hold at silly point. Kirsten, in fact, does that rather too often, flirting with stuff outside off and playing too far from his body to have any hope of controlling the shot. Almost inevitably, edges have flown out of reach of the slips in the early part of his innings - this time, it went straight to the fielder, and SA found itself 8/1.

Adam Bacher is a fine young player, and I suspect it will be he who steps into the opener's slot when form or age account for either Kirsten or Hudson. But Bacher needs to work on two areas of vulnerability - the first a tendency to use his pads far too often for comfort, and the other a penchant to play across the line, or draw away from the stumps to hit through cover. These two mistakes have got him out enough times in recent outings, and when Tendulkar, who in the first half of the SA innings rotated his bowlers very well, brought Kumble on in the ninth over, the leggie reponded with the flipper on off stump, Bacher (13/34 with one four) drew back, slashed, and found his off stump knocked out of true. SA 47/2. Funnily enough, just before the SA innings began, Allan Donald was telling the TV commentator that the wicket was keeping low, that horizontal bat shots were not on and that batsmen should play through the line - makes you wonder if the young Bacher was listening to his senior colleague?

Cullinan (21 off 42 with two fours), again, is a fine player - all silken elegance when he drives or flicks off his pads. On the day, though, there seemed to be something bothering him - his footwork today was more consistent with the Macarena than with the batting crease. And it was then that Kumble, for once finding a wicket to his liking, was bowling well and giving batsmen all kinds of trouble. Surprisingly, it was precisely at this point that Kumble went off, and was replaced by Robin Singh. Strange move, and Cullinan and Kallis, while not finding strokemaking easy, managed to work the ball round for the singles and took the score along to 89 before Cullinan flicked at Robin Singh for Jadeja to dive and hold a good one at midwicket. SA 89/3.

That brought Jonty Rhodes to the wicket - and with the usual quota of close (some would say way too close) singles and innovative hitting, SA progressed, if not at breakneck speed (the 100 came off the 30th over), then at the least faster than India had.

Kallis, meanwhile, played a model innings. Knowing the ball was not really hittable, he kept working it round, looking rock solid off either foot and punishing only the deliveries that strayed to make 79 off 127 with eight fours before impatience got the better of him and he ended up trying to swwing Robin out of the ground and managed to shovel it down Ankola's throat at the square leg fence. By then, however, SA (which in 40 overs had reached 148, as compared to India's 122/5 in 40) was on 152, and well in sight of a win.

Cronje, who has been in prime form in this tournament, worked the ball away well right from the get-go and, in company of the adventurous Rhodes who kept taking chances and found them coming off, brought SA to within a toucher of the target before finishing things off with a huge six off Kumble followed by a lovely late cut for four, followed by a cover drive off Srinath's first ball of the third spell for four to end the game. Rhodes went off unbeaten on 29 off 50 with one four, Cronje 20 off 16 with two fours and a six, and SA had won with two fours and a six, and SA past the winning post with six wickets, and 4.5 overs, to spare.

In course of the post match television briefing, Sachin Tendulkar indicated that the Indian bowlers and fielders had bowled a restrictive line and length to ensure that SA took more overs than it should have to get past the winning post, because the team had realised the importance of the net run rate.

Fair enough, and Sachin, as already indicated, did ring in some very shrewd bowling changes in the first half of the innings. Most impressive was the fact that whenever Kumble bowled, Sachin kept the pressure on with a slip, a silly point and a forward short leg, inducing doubt in the batsman's mind. Kumble for his part bowled very well, and with luck running his way should have got more wickets than the one he ended up with.

But given that the wicket was playing lower and slower all the time, I frankly don't understand why Ganguly (this is getting monotonous, this mention of the skipper's blind spot in re Ganguly's bowling) and Jadeja were not given a bowl. True, when Jadeja bowled in the first game of this series he was hit about - but surely there is a difference between gentle medium pace bowled on a batting wicket and the same stuff on a wicket like this where the ball was stopping and coming on to the bat? Also, well though Ankola and Singh bowled, there was surely, in the fact that those two finished their full quotas while Srinath had three left at the end, Prasad and Kumble one apiece, an indication that the main bowlers were not used in the middle to attack a bit more?

Saving them for the end overs? To what purpose, given that with a target of 180, the game was highly unlikely to go right down to the wire?

It seems unfair to keep taking note of captaincy errors - but then, that is part of analysis, and presumably, Tendulkar and coach Madan Lal do have post match discussions in which such things are discussed. Considering the continued banishment of Ganguly to the outfield (India used only five bowlers today, where SA, though in the driver's seat right from the beginning, used 7) leads me to wonder if such post mortems are being conducted at all.

The funny thing was that for once, India had everything going for it. Bad wicket, likely to worsen, luck with the toss, the opportunity to force a win and thus go into the crucial games against Zimbabwe later in the tournament two points ahead - and in the end made a meal of it.

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